The Expositor's Bible: IndexAyres, S. G. (Samuel Gardiner)
Religion
The Expositor's Bible: Index
Ayres, S. G. (Samuel Gardiner)
Bible -- Commentaries -- Indexes
This is a statement that we meet with a blank denial. No text has been
added to the Bible. No revelation of God has been given or will be given
in addition to that within its covers. You say God has revealed Himself
by His skill and power in nature. He has revealed Himself by His
providence in history. He has revealed Himself in the individual life of
believers. He has revealed Himself by His Spirit to His Church. He has
in a sense inspired the books of devotion that are the treasures of the
world. The Holy Spirit has promised to take of the things of Christ and
show them to every believer. Yes, it is all true. But what has God said
in nature, in Providence, in Christian experience, in Christian
literature that He has not said first in the Bible? Take the most
beautiful thought ever suggested by the profoundest Christian mind, and
you will find it quietly folded in some word of Jesus, in some argument
of an Apostle. This was the argument for the inspiration of the Gospel
on which my old teacher, Dr. Robertson Smith, was specially wont to
dwell. "We mean," he said, "that the Bible contains within itself a
perfect picture of God's gracious relations to man, and that we have no
need to go outside of the Bible history to know anything of God and His
saving will toward us, that the whole growth of the true religion up to
its perfect fulness is set before us in the record of God's dealings
with Israel, culminating in the manifestation of Jesus Christ. History
has not taught us that there is anything in true religion to add to the
New Testament. We still stand in the nineteenth century where Christ
stood in the first, or rather Christ stands as high above us as He did
above His disciples, the perfect Master, the supreme Head of the
fellowship of all true religion." Even so, as Christ stands, and forever
will stand, infinitely above us, so does the Bible stand, and ever will
stand, infinitely above all other books. Consider what this claim of
finality means in an age when everything is changing, when our books of
history, science, and philosophy last only a few years. Think what it is
to say this in the face of the lights that are now streaming in on all
sides upon the human soul. Think also that this statement cannot be
challenged by any Christian. No Christian knows anything about God but
what has been already written in the Word of God. The experience of the
saints runs with these words: "I had little thought of its intellectual
grandeur or literary beauty. Christ was there. I went to Him for life
and found it. I was baptized and absorbed in His dying love."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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